Tag Archives: The New Yorker

Weekend Reading List: Atwood, Buffy, Carrie, Disney

Hey kids, it’s been a while! Lots to catch up on:

 

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Weekend Reading List: Dystopian warriors and exotic others

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Weekend Reading List: New year, new list, new hope

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Weekend Reading List: Climate fiction, colours, Carmilla

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Weekend Reading List: Back, bigger, badder

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Welcome back everyone! Unfridged has been away for a long time now, so there’s plenty of great internet reading to catch up on. Let’s get started:

  • First off, a great piece on video game diversity. It’s called “no one is coming to take away your shitty toys,” which is pretty much all you need to know about it.  [Midnight Resistance]
  • I would have been all over these IAmElemental action figures growing up. They’re so wonderful!
  • Teen Vogue talks about growing up in fantasy worlds, discovering self-worth, and finding queer love in Tamora Pierce books.
  • Dungeons & Dragons turns forty this year, and everyone is lining up to talk about how important it is! First the New York Times discusses how the game influenced the storytelling of a generation of writers, and the New Yorker published a piece on a more personal experience. (I’m choosing to ignore the fact that the author categorically denies that women play the game. Dude. No.)
  • In other D&D news, the Mary Sue talks about the game’s new focus on sexuality and gender diversity with lead game designers Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford.
  • RITA SKEETER (or, you know, J.K. Rowling) WROTE A THING. AND IT IS GLORIOUS. Best recap of a World Cup ever. [Today Books]
  • What’s that you say? You’d love to see an 80s-tastic Dazzler music video? Complete with mutant special effects and derby girls? I live to serve.
  • Dorkly has a list of ten conversations that would have radically changed Harry Potter. Just call it Harry Potter and the Healthy Communication.
  • Bitch tackles the ever-present problem of convention harassment, with some interesting survey data.
  • If you’ve never stopped to consider the racial implications of having your few characters of colour act as sidekicks, then this is a must-read (I mean, everyone should read it, especially because it uses James Bond as an example, but you know). [The Nerds of Color]
  • Still doing amazing in-depth writing on video game sexism, Polygon presents real examples of the abhorrent conditions women working in games face, drawing parallels and conclusions, and making me really sad.
  • On the surface, Autostraddle’s piece on anime web series RWBY is just a review of one show, but the criticisms levelled against it—the show’s paper thin characterization and dependance on pernicious female stereotypes, for starters—apply to much of our media.
  • Hey you know Emily Graslie? That awesome person who does a YouTube show called the Brain Scoop? Well you totally should and, what a coincidence, Cosmopolitan has a great interview with her.
  • Presented without comment: “46 times Captain Janeway was outta control sassy.” [Buzzfeed]
  • This wonderful thing is happening: In Sussex, horses were mysteriously getting their mane and tails braided at night. No one could figure out why this was happening, until the police realized that all the reports were coming in during white witchcraft festivals. Yes. You read that right. White witches are going around in the dead of night making ponies prettier. The world is a glorious place. [Horsemart]
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Weekend Reading List: Night witches and world-changing kisses

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And the almost requisite video game content!

  • Lesbian kisses change the world, you guys! The New Yorker has the story of how an unplanned lady kiss got The Sims made, and it’s such a fun idea that I’m not even going to let “I guess straight guys that make sports games loved the idea of controlling two lesbians” ruin my mood.
  • Final Fantasy XIV will also be allowing same-sex relationships in the game. [Kotaku]
  • There’s a new Feminist Frequency video out! This time the incomparable Anita Sarkeesian takes on “Women as Background Decoration” in her “Tropes vs. Women in Games” series.
  • There’s a Bea Arthur game. THERE’S A BEA ARTHUR GAME. (And no, my excitement doesn’t stem from the fact that I just watched the Golden Girls series finale and sobbed like a little child. Don’t be absurd.) [NewNowNext]
  • In a super disappointing, eyestrain-causing (due to the overzealous rolling of said eyes) move, Ubisoft won’t be including any female protagonists in Assassin’s Creed Unity because “women are too difficult to animate.” Autostraddle has info about the initial shitshow, GameSpot talks about a former Ubisoft developer who’s poking major holes in the company’s excuse that adding playable women would have added a significant amount of work, The Escapist explores the game’s French Revolution setting and why, historically-speaking, women should actually be included, and #WomenAreTooHardToAnimate over on Twitter is great.
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Weekend Reading List: Sneaky Bisexuals and Space Bees

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  • The Smithsonian magazine explores how much science fiction literature affects the actual progress of science.
  • I am pretty concerned—obviously, given the title of this blog—with the killing off of women for narrative purposes. It’s a very common trope, and one that has it’s own genre: the Dead Girl Show. The Los Angeles Review of Books has an interesting take on the subject, coming to the conclusion that shows like Twin PeaksVeronica Mars, and True Detective both forbid the Dead Girl from having any real agency, from even being a character on her own show, and “cast girls as wild, vulnerable creatures who need to be protected from the power of their own sexualities.”
  • A little while ago I linked to Janelle Asselin’s critique of the Teen Titans #1 cover, an insightful look at comics’ ongoing problems with bad art (and a particular type of bad art that manifests as wonky anatomy and needless sexualization of any and all women). Shocking pretty much nobody, Asselin was severely abused for daring to have an opinion, and has since received rape threats. [The Daily Beast]
  • We Are Comics is a great Tumblr that collects pictures and testimonials from loving, loyal fans, in the process showing the wonderful diversity of the folks who love everything from Superman to Sandman.
  • There’s something about a unified canon, a set of events that happened and that everyone agrees on, that really appeals to my straight-laced side. It’s why Disney throwing away the entire Star Wars expanded universe really bothered me. (I can see why they wanted to streamline, but they also really threw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to amazing, interesting female characters). The Mary Sue, however, makes a compelling case for not caring about canon at all, that we shouldn’t let big, profit-seeking corporations dictate which stories are privileged over others. And, you know, fair point.
  • Speaking of Star Wars, what if the reason there are so few female parts is that the main characters aren’t human at all, but are actually insectoid hive creatures who have a very different understanding of gender. It’s as good a theory as any. [Max Gladstone]
  • Autostraddle tackles Orphan Black‘s Delphine and the trope of the bisexual femme fatale.
  • There’s some pretty interesting research being done on male World of Warcraft gamers who choose to play with female avatars. The study found that the men pretty drastically changed their gameplay when playing as women, but not in ways that resembled how women actually play. [Geekosystem]
  • Ever remember the Sims you left behind? Because they never forgot you. [The New Yorker]
  • The Mary Sue is still doing its “Agent of S.T.Y.L.E” series, this time with everyone’s favourite green glamazon, She-Hulk.

Top image: She-Hulk #4 cover by Kevin Wada.

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Weekend Reading List: Cat burglars and consenting cuddles

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Image by Roxanne Palmer (aka Roxy Drew)

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